Bad Ass Dancing

My number 2 favorite bboy of all time.

EVS INTERVIEW

I had the chance to meet up with an old friend of mine. I've known EVS since the early 90s and got a chance to listen to his newest productions and talk to him about his new album Convenience Store.
PART 1

PART 2


Convenience Store can be purchased at Access Hip Hop and at LA 2 THE BAY.

BETTY WRIGHT IF YOU LOVE ME REMIX

When I started diggin' for 70s soul, rap samples mainly, in the nineties, I took a fondness to Betty Wright. Her music had a Pop feeling to it, while still having that funky rhythm. Kinda like Sam and Dave's Soul Man. Her popular tracks were Clean Up Woman and Tonight Is The Night. Here's another Betty Wright track, with an additional break created by yours truly. If Sake had his hands on my version, I know he'd play it. Hehe. To save space on my mac account, I uploaded it to my myspace.
IF YOU LOVE ME remix


I was dreaming that if I ever remade this song with another singer, one of these pictures would be the cover of my 12inch single.
This one Stacy appears sad but is trying not to show it.

Here she's depressed and sexy. A combination that goes well sometimes with hot chicks.

Forever In a Mane Remix

I made this this morning.. The idea is there, I think it sounds cool, but the band changes tempos in the middle
and the beat is thrown off just a tad bit...
FOREVER IN A MANE

Doin' It In the Park

Yesterday, The San Diego Zulu Chapter celebrated their 2 year anniversary at Embarcadero Park. The weather was nice. The view of Coronado was awesome. It was a good day for bbq and bboying.







Dyno Rock always seems to look fresh (clothing wise) each time I see him at every jam.






It was a pretty decent turnout.





Nothing like some fresh burgers on the grill. I partook of some veggie burgers (not shown.)







Kari, Julz, and Auren getting some beads ready for our new graduates. Biggups to Raff, Bookum, and E-Swift for going through the whole Zulu Nation Process and becoming official members that day.

On another note, check out Kid Nasty from Cypher City Kings. He got his hair permmed. E-swift told me that he's going to grow his out now.

Happy Bday Louie

Although Louis Armstrong was born on August 4th 1901, he believed that he was born on the 4th of July. Hehe, old Pops knew he was great so he wanted to share the same birthday at the United States. His trumpet solo in this clip blows me away everytime.

SET UP BBOY BATTLES

The Son of Jarel and I probably talking smack after we've witnessed yet another crash by those fearless crowd pleasers. I gotta give them credit though, they've got a lot of heart.


Last Thursday, I dj'd at a bboy class and open floor session at Hot Monkey Love with some minimal Internet promoting (myspace, yelp, message boards, etc.) Four people showed up. Alma, the owner of the place, asked how we can get people to come. I told her that we'd throw some type of bboy battle to see if people came. Dat, the organizer of the jam, decided to his 3 on 3 battle for 50 bucks to the winners, and I decided to incorporate The North Vs. South battle (Northside bboys vs. Southside bboys). I made an internet flyer for the event and did the same amount of minimal internet promoting within a weeks time and 51 people showed up last night. Still not a great amount of people, but it was a drastic change from last week's class/jam. Of course this isn't new for me. I've tried throwing jams without set-battles and still get a low percentage of people that come those nights. Maybe I have to learn to accept that Bboying has always been a dance based on competition. Is Bboying really a "fight dance?" Most of the bboys looked like they were ready to kill their opponents especially during The North Vs. South battle. Hey, to each his own.

Btw, I'm growing less and less interested in DJing for bboys, and it's not because of the bboys. I dunno, maybe I do it too much. For the last 5 weeks, I've dj'd something bboy related. The thing that keeps me content is being around friends at jams. There's nothing like hanging out with friends.

This is a real battle.

Round 3 Joys of Filtering

I filtered bass sounds from Garage Band. Noticed they do sound less fake from the stock keyboard sound.
Guitar sounds maybe subject to removal from this rough draft. I also filtered some of the drums, so that they
have a dirtier quality. Next mission, to get rid of the monotonous melodies I'm creating. The majority
of sounds came from the keyboard. Drum sounds sampled of course.

MURDER ROCK SWING

FREE DOWNLOAD FROM WYNTON

FREE MUSIC NEVER HURT ANYONE. :)
HERE-NOW

On another note, doesn't Scarlett look hot here? Yikes...Woody, the mastermind for the hotness...Heheh..



Listen to Wynton and find all of the Scarlett and Woody pictures on google. Be a man while you're at it.

Invert Signal

When I started making beats there were always particular songs I wanted to sample, but had difficulty doing so because the artist's voice was in it. I always wished there was that secret machine out there that allowed you to take out the shitty vocals from a song. I never found it. I even tried using Kareoke machines, it didn't happen. Well 12 years later, I've come the closest to taking out the vocals to a song. You can still hear the artist's voice in the background, but barely. With Pro-tools, one of the Audio presets is Invert, which allows you to split the stereo tracks and have some sounds cancel each other out. Interesting isn't it. I'll probably never use this technique in any of my songs, but I guess it was fun coming across and finally coming close to doing so. Now I just have to practice my windmills.

Albert Jone's Mother Nature Test w/o vocals


This is a good example of mastering the skill. Some person took Stevie's voice out completely. Crazy huh?


I've never heard Stevie put out an instrumental album of his songs before. It seems unlikely that he would. Who knows?

Test 2 Big Band (Gettin' more confident)

No keyboard sounds used here. Raised tempo from Devil In The Deep Blue Sea. Used piano, horn and bass sounds.
Turned down drums drastically, but they still appear somewhat loud. Eh....Round 2.
Not singing over this one. I've learned my lesson from the last fiasco.

Round 2

Young Mane, according to Starberry Sweet..


Thanks for finding this flick Storm.

NOT WONDERFUL......Round 1

Trying to make Big Band Swing when you don't have a Big Band is difficult. Some say it might be impossible, but I believe it's possible. Quality-wise, well that's another story. But I figured I'd give it a shot and take time with this one. I took Basie's S'wonderful and filtered it to make it my bassline. I figured I'd probably never sound like Walter Page with Garageband bass sounds, so I'd just sample it. Listening to it again, it's way too loud. I'll make a note to turn that down. I've rearranged the horns from the song to fit into the song. The cheesy piano and tenor sax sounds are from Garage Band, and are ideas I have for background improvisational sounds if I ever hire real musicians to play it out or if I decide to purchase some real instruments myself. Drum programming is from the drum major. Horns were sampled from the original song and arranged on the MPC. The incredible singing (haha not) is from no other than the Crown Prince of Rhythm. I wish I had Starberry Sweet here to sing the tune. But it was fun. It was fun, hearing myself with a nice microphone. But hearing yourself through the microphone and listening to the end result is totally different haha. It's like when I break, I think I'm the shit when I go out, but when I watch it, I look really wack and slow. Any ways, here's a sample. Feel free to tell me what you don't like.
ROUND 1 WONDERFUL